...And now for something completely different: The Rants of a University Student (#41)

You wouldn’t normally think of a Pub Crawl as an educational experience, unless of course you’re doing research on how many juggidy-jugs you can drink before you pass-out on the floor of some random bathroom or about how much force is needed to jump through a plate glass window at the legion. The Big Ass Pub Crawl however, taught me a few things about the downtown night life that I wasn’t aware of before. See, I come from a time when downtown used to be the place to be, a time when people actually went to Myron’s. No seriously, people would actually pay to get into Moron’s, and on their own free will at that! You younger students probably think I’m crazy, but it’s the truth.

Anyways, the Kent Street I encountered the night of the Pub Crawl was much different from the one I remember. I first noticed that, a) Kent Street is pretty damn sketchy. Random fights were breaking out here and there and there were some pretty some shady characters roaming around, not to mention a few too many prostitots to be out that time of the night. Of course back in the day Kent Street saw its share of rowdiness too, as, every now and then, the crowds from Moron’s, Melon’s, and Breaker’s would converge on Kent, along with a small fleet of cabs, 10 or 12 City Police vehicles and a couple RCMP cruisers shuttling patron after patron off to Sleepy Hollow. You didn’t, however, have to fear for your life, unless, of course, you had hit on some random girlfriend of a guy hopped up on E. Need more proof that Kent is becoming increasingly ridiculous? 3 words: Myron’s Chem-Free. Sketch. b) Source Security is absolutely and utterly useless. I came out of a bar that night to see some guy getting his head bashed in, and not like a few love-taps to the face, this was hospital-trip-in-an-ambulance kind of bashed in, and all the while some Source Security guard watched on from about, oh, 6 feet away. Not 3 minutes later me and another guy had to break up two other guys in the exact same place. Now, in case you’ve never seen me before, I am not exactly what you’d call the most buff guy on campus, and though I went to school in the Crick for 9 years, I am definitely not qualified to break up two drunken idiots arguing over some bar star or cigarettes or whatever. We intervened because these two guys were about to rip each other apart, and we were slightly concerned, which is more than I can say for Mr. Shit-for-brains security dude. Finally, c) The Dining Room of Piazza Joe’s is a ridiculous place to host a dance party. Call me crazy, but a place with slippery wet floors, broken beer bottles and a massive head-bashable fountain right in the centre of the room is not the best place on earth to have a couple hundred very drunk and very stumbly students rocking out. As a side-note, girls, please start wearing more practical footwear. I know you think the heels and the hours of pain are worth it to look a little bit taller, but honestly, I don’t think you’re really fooling anyone. “Hey look Ted, Mary grew 3 inches since yesterday.” “Wow, she is so hot now.” Here’s a little test, if the shoes are so uncomfortable that you have to take them off before the end of the night to walk home barefoot, or worse, around the glass-covered dance floor then those shoes are very very stupid. Go get your money back.

The Guardian reported last week that as a result of the collapse of a 35 or so year-old overpass in Laval, Québec last week, PEI’s Department of Transportation and Public Works has sprung into action, inspecting all 4 overpasses on PEI. Yep. All 4 of them. Thankfully each structure was given the stringent “two-tier” on-site inspection. The first test is a visual test, which consists of some guy looking at the overpass and noting if there are any “sagging beams or missing parts.” Missing parts eh? “Hmmm. This one seems to be missing a 7-tonne pillar. I wonder where that got off to now?” I was told that the second part of the test is an auditory test. Yes, and auditory test on an immovable structure made of tons of concrete. Wonderful. Why the hell does The Guardian feel it necessary to make Islanders look like the biggest morons on the face of the earth. Also last week, instead of using the front page to report on actual news, like Canadians in Afghanistan or North Korea’s nuclear testing, they had a story about some poet writing a poem about this lady peeling carrots somewhere up west. Honestly, what the hell is wrong with them?

Last week the U.S. House of Representatives was advised to invest in some new Coast Guard vessels for the Arctic, prompted by reports from scientists who suggested that global warming could result in a completely ice-free Arctic passage within decades. “We must conduct surveys of our nation's extended continental shelf in order to support our claims of sovereignty.” said advisor Mead Treadwell. Does no one else see anything wrong with this? So the Americans want to exert their control and sovereignty and superiority and yeah, blah blah blah. Same old. But the North-West passage may be ice-free within a matter of decades? Um. I think we should maybe get some priorities figured out here. Instead of working to combat global warming and the catastrophic results of having the Arctic ice melting, we’re going to buy a couple boats so we can sail around up there when it’s all thawed out? Brilliant.

In other news, in response to the tens of thousands of terrorists that row across Lake Superior to get into the US every year, the US Coast Guard has begun to patrol the Great Lakes on boats with mounted .30-calibre machine guns. This would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Everyone realizes the gravity of 9-11 and its fallout, but this is a bit of an illogical over-reaction. As an old proverb puts it: “Why are you out on your lawn wildly waving your arms?” “I’m keeping away all the tigers.” “There aren’t any tigers around here.” “See how well it works!?”

Finally, I would like to apologize for my previous rant in which I criticized the extravagant spending on the redesign of Peter Pan Corner. I had stated that I thought the $3.5 million was a bit excessive, but see, I didn’t realize that by “fix Peter Pan Corner” they actually meant “rip up everything within a 5-mile radius” and “push mud around randomly for a few weeks.” My bad.